


angel of death.

by arihara



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, I hate this fic, M/M, a lot of death also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 05:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12474432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arihara/pseuds/arihara
Summary: It was Keito's fault.





	angel of death.

**Author's Note:**

> this probably hurt me more to write than it will hurt you to read because i had no idea how to go about the ending and i kind of threw some shit on there but here, take this, kill me if you want
> 
> the idea for the general structure of the plot goes to my lovely/evil qpp mari (twitter @shinoyuuta) please go to her with any complaints
> 
> i'm kidding. come to me. anyway, please enjoy, if "enjoying" is a thing you can do with this

Tonight was the third or fourth night in a row that Keito sat, sleepless, on the floor of his bedroom with his back against his bed and his knees hugged to his chest, the same slip of paper clutched in his hand. He wasn't sure how many times the sun had risen and set. He only looked at the wall across from him. Despite the glasses that sat feebly on the bridge of his nose, his vision was blurry—not from tears, he'd exhausted those long ago—rather, from the physical weakness he was overcome with. He'd forced himself to drink water and occasionally nibble on crackers or rice just to keep himself in good enough health for the funeral on Saturday, but other than that, he rarely left his room or even stood from his spot against his bed.

It wasn't comfortable, of course. He felt exhausted, even though he'd barely moved over the past three days and hadn't uttered a word. A careful observer could only tell he was still alive when he took a hoarse breath, or maybe if his eyes could muster the strength to blink once every couple of minutes. With every passing second, his stomach seemed to growl more furiously, yet at the same time he didn't think he could swallow down a meal if it was forced down his throat. His family left him alone like this. They knew he needed some time to recover, and frankly he was grateful not to be forced to think about something else. Eichi was all that ran through his unfocused brain—changing his frame of mind seemed like a distant dream by now, he thought, but he was alright with thinking about Eichi.

He could never again see Eichi's shining smile, the sun beating down on his hair on the days they spent together in the Tenshouin gardens. He could never again look into those crystalline eyes, the eyes that always gleamed like they were on the verge of tears, whether Eichi was laughing or scheming or truly upset, and appeared to know more about Keito than Keito knew about himself. He could never again lean his head on Eichi's delicate shoulder after hours of toiling over student council paperwork and feel the warm touch of his friend's hand running through his hair as a reassurance that he would soon be free of that stress.

He could never do any of that again. He would see Eichi one more time, sure, but there would be no shining smile or gleaming eyes or warm touch emanating from a cold corpse of a boy who once was.

It wasn't shocking that Eichi's life had been taken so soon. Everyone Eichi had ever spoken to knew that he wouldn't live long, so while the news of his death was disappointing, very few were devastated. His family had hoped he would make it farther into adulthood, at least live longer than his father. His closest friends at the academy, his club, his unit, all of them were struggling with losing such a prominent figure in their lives. Even some of the school's students who weren't too fond of their student council president mourned his loss.

But no one felt it as hard as Keito.

The exact circumstances of Eichi's death were never elaborated upon publicly. The press, Eichi's friends, and even his family were told only that he was found at his desk in the student council office with no pulse and with blood trailing from his mouth. Only Keito had known the full story, however, as Keito was the one to find him there.

They had been working together as usual. Outside, it was probably around five in the evening; the sun was beginning to set already as the winter made its way into the world. It was cold, yet Eichi had insisted on keeping a window open. To "let some fresh air into the office," he had said. To "let some life in." Keito had obliged, only because his friend would have continued to complain and refused to work if he did not. Troublesome as always, that Eichi of his.

Eichi shivered. "Hmm, this school year is coming closer to an end, isn't it? We will graduate soon," he said, breathing a visible puff of air as he set his pen down.

"That's true. We have to complete this work before we can graduate, though." Keito adjusted his glasses on his nose without looking up from the paper he was scribbling on. His mouth was pulled into a tight line and his brows were furrowed in focus. It was evident that he intended to hold true on that promise.

His companion, however, only groaned exaggeratedly. "But Keito," he whined. "It's so much! We have other student council members who need to get used to the workload. Without you here, they will have at least three times as much resting on their shoulders. Shouldn't we adjust them to that?"

Keito grunted and flipped his paper over. Eichi's complaints were only going to make his work more difficult. "They can do the work when it is their time. We still have this responsibility to fulfill, as their senpai. Now shut up so I can focus."

"I could resign from the student council at any time, and then it wouldn't be my responsibility anymore." Eichi tapped his pen on his desk.

"Nonsense," Keito muttered. "That's the coward's way out. You're more than that. You have signed up for this duty, now you must carry it out. It is as simple as that."

"The only thing stopping me from doing it is you, you know."

"Good. I will continue to stop you from breaking your promises. That has done you poorly in the past, and I will not allow for dishonesty to spew from your mouth anymore."

Eichi gasped and placed his hands on his hips. He tried to stand, but the cold made him weak, and he could only put a little weight on his feet before he lost his balance and fell back into his seat. "Keito! If either of us is the dishonest one, you are more so. I made my intentions clear from the start. You, however, manipulated Kiryu and Sakuma without a word of what you really aimed to do with them—"

"Shut up, Eichi," Keito growled through gritted teeth. He slammed his pen onto his desk and whipped his head up to face his friend. "Don't talk about that. I'm trying to move on, I'm trying to learn from the mistakes I made, but you make it so difficult when you won't let me—"

"You cannot run away from the past, Keito. You need to inherit your failures and shortcomings and embrace them—"

"Oh, you're one to talk! Have you ever apologized to those Oddballs? You destroyed them without hesitation—"

"I have, in fact! I am not the person I was back then! I have learned—"

"Then why do you ridicule me for saying the same of myself—"

"You hardly exhibit such a change as I—"

"That's a joke! You must be joking! I can't believe—"

"You haven't even told Kanzaki-kun what you did! What will he think of you—"

"Don't bring him into this! Himemiya doesn't know of your atrocities either—"

"Well, I didn't directly hurt one of Tori's closest friends and lie to his face about the formation of my unit! He knows everything that fine did. Wataru has told him. I have told him. The whole school knows! You preach that Akatsuki is a unit formed upon trust and honesty, yet you hide its secret, bitter, dishonest past from its own irreplaceable member! You liar, you have not changed one bit from the liar you were—"

"SHUT UP!" Keito stood up quickly, letting his chair clatter onto the floor behind him. "I don't want to hear this! You have done more horrible and dehumanizing things than I ever could, and the least you could do is be patient with my recovery as I have been patient with yours! You're so ungrateful, Eichi, you spoiled little brat. You haven't matured the tiniest bit from when we first met."

Eichi remained silent, his mouth hidden behind a clenched fist. Keito gathered a stack of papers and his pen with shaky hands and strode swiftly towards the door. "You're hopeless. I can't believe you stooped even that low." He turned back to look at Eichi, who coughed and moved his hand onto his chest. "I'm going to finish this work in the library. I will return shortly, and then we will go home. Separately."

With that, he exited the office, slamming the door behind him.

Keito grumbled quietly to himself as he stormed to the empty library, which was somewhat warmer than the office due to there being no idiot who begged to open the windows. It was comfortable. An hour or two passed quickly as he silently flipped through the documents, filling in names and numbers where he needed, marking off tabs for necessary signatures. He finished sooner than he expected to. Burying himself in work had succeeded in forcing him to forget his anger—perhaps too well, he noted, as he barely remembered doing the work at all. It was done, though. He felt calmer. Perhaps he had to return and apologize to Eichi.

Carefully, he walked back to the student council office, every step calculated and gentle. His heart was beginning to race. How... could he apologize for what he had said? What Eichi said was horrible, but his own words were no exception to that adjective either. As he played it over in his head, he knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

"Eichi? Are you still here, or have you gone home?" The room was still silent, so Keito assumed he had either left without waiting for Keito to return (which was reasonable, and he wouldn't be shocked) or fallen asleep (also realistic, as they had both been working late hours recently). Sighing, he pulled the door open and stepped inside.

Eichi was slumped over in his chair. So he had fallen asleep, Keito noted. That position looked uncomfortable—hunched slightly forward, not quite leaning on the table at all, his arms limp on the desk. He figured he ought to wake him up.

He stepped forward. A gust of wind blew in through the open window and nudged Eichi's bangs out of his face.

Keito saw the blood dripping down his chin.

No, it wasn't dripping. It was dried. It had dripped, and then it had ceased to drip. A while ago, most likely.

Hesitantly, he stepped closer. Eichi's body was completely still. Not a single heaving, shuddering breath greeted Keito. None of the little whimpers and mumbles Eichi tended to release in his sleep.

He opened his mouth to whisper his name, but nothing came from his lips save for a dry, hoarse sob. He couldn't move. He couldn't even blink. His eyes were frozen, glazed over, fixed upon what he was hoping, praying, trying to find the soul to believe wasn't the truth. It was temporary. He only fainted. He was asleep. He would wake up. He was fine. He was fine, he was fine, he was fine. Wasn't he?

He would wake up.

Keito would wake him up and he would apologize profusely for what he had said, he would get on his knees, he would beg for forgiveness in return for Eichi's trust once more, he would plead for the continuation of their friendship, of their life together, perhaps for something more. He just had to shake his shoulder and rouse him.

Delicately, he reached a hand out and placed it on Eichi's cold shoulder. It took him a moment of trying to force himself to breathe before he gently pushed on it, knowing for sure that he would receive no reaction but hoping beyond hope that there could be some miracle and he would cough and sputter and laugh again.

Eichi's head only lolled to the side limply. Keito inhaled. He felt like he was about to faint, to vomit, perhaps both at the same time. Maybe he would choke on his vomit unconsciously and die at Eichi's side. They could be dead together.

But Eichi wasn't dead, surely.

He would wake.

Keito's last conversation with him would not be such a miserable, horrible, insulting argument.

It wouldn't.

It really wouldn't.

He leaned forward over the desk more vigorously, his despair forcing action into his weak, brittle limbs. "Eichi," he said quietly, his voice breaking on the second syllable. His eyes had gone from dry to overflowing with tears, so much that he shook his head rapidly to throw his glasses off of his face as they got in the way of his sadness. They landed in the opposite corner of the room, and he heard one lens shatter.

"Eichi," he said, louder, gripping tightly onto his friend with both hands. He shook, he shook hard and fast, only causing the motionless blond head to roll back and forth and the sagging arms to shake. It was like he was trying to awaken life into a doll, or perhaps a corpse. Eichi was neither of those, he knew. Eichi was just pulling a trick on him. He could only hold his breath for so long, right?

"Eichi," he sobbed, collapsing forward onto the desk; his legs were shaking too much to support him, and perhaps this way he could get closer, close enough to see the dried blood on his chin and neck and on his white shirt, but not on his jacket because he had taken it off despite the cold, that idiot, did he _want_ to die that night? If he did, it was Keito's fault, for his cruel words. It was Keito's fault.

"Eichi," he cried, pulling his friend's torso as close to his own as he could, feeling the cold skin through his bloody shirt and knowing what the complete lack of warmth meant. The body was stiff, almost beginning to freeze thanks to the wind blowing in the miserable temperature from outside as well as the snowflakes that were beginning to fall, hitting Keito sharply in the face, sticking his tears to his cheeks. He had read somewhere a legend that a kiss from one's true, destined love could revive them from the dead, and damn it, he was desperate enough that he pressed his chapped lips to Eichi's blue ones, wetting the blood once more and tasting it on his tongue.

The body remained still in his arms. Not Eichi, Eichi's body.

It was Keito's fault.

"Eichi," he weakly whispered, letting his exhausted head fall onto the dead body's shoulder. "Eichi, he sniffled as he felt himself become just as weak and helpless as his friend. "Eichi," he barely mumbled, forgetting about how cold he was, only thinking about Eichi, because how could he think of anything else when his best friend, his only love, his childhood companion lay motionless in his arms, so many words left unsaid between them? How could he not think of what could have been, if it weren't for his impulsive arguing just that one night?

"Eichi," he thought, closing his eyes. He was too weak to cry. He could barely bring himself to let go of the body, except that he heard a paper crumple beneath where he leaned on the desk. He reached down for it, surprised that he had the strength to lift the tiny, bloodstained scrap.

On it, in shaky, hardly legible cursive, in the ink that came from the pen spilling onto the desktop, were two words: _"I resign."_

Reading those words was the last thing Keito remembered doing before he blacked out and woke up at home, on his bed. He had hardly moved since.

Tonight was the third or fourth night in a row that Keito sat, squeezing that note in his sweaty palm, replaying that argument and the moment he found Eichi's body on loop, for three or four days, he wasn't sure how many. He took a deep breath.

He was supposed to deliver the eulogy. The funeral was in two days. Maybe one day. He wasn't sure how many.

He hadn't written the eulogy.

No, he hadn't written anything. Writing meant moving. Writing meant turning the light on so he could see, writing meant releasing the scrap he held in his hand and placing a pen between his fingers. Instead of writing, he memorized it. He strung the words together in his brain, over and over, enough times that he could never forget them if he tried to hammer them out of his head. It was good, he thought; impersonal enough that everyone at the service could sympathize, yet it conveyed underlying feelings that only Keito would understand.

At the end of the eulogy, he would say the line, "He was loved." To hell with the friends and family and fans that loved him, that line came from Keito's heart alone. They could pretend that it was theirs, but it wasn't. If Keito hadn't gotten to say it to Eichi before he passed, he would say it now. He would say it so that everyone could hear and everyone could know, but at the same time no one would know.

He would deliver the eulogy, and he hadn't thought of anything after that. Surely he would take a break from school and return at some point. Of course his fellow student council members would be struggling without him or Eichi, but they needed to get used to that eventually, didn't they? They would be fine. Keito would come back after a week, maybe two, and increase their efficiency once more. No issues there.

As for socially, he had other friends. He had Kiryu and Kanzaki to talk with, though realistically he spent the vast majority of his time with Eichi. His unit-mates wouldn't be ones to go out for tea with him or have intellectually stimulating conversations with him as Eichi did. Perhaps Aoba, but he was always a bit of a wet blanket. He could try talking to Tsukinaga again, but... no. His best options were Fushimi and Isara, who would be buried under student council work inevitably.

Perhaps it would take him more time to get off his feet than he initially had anticipated.

He thought on this more, thinking through every idol in the school, even considering Kunugi-sensei to be a conversational option, as the sun rose and set and rose once more. He settled on Sakuma eventually, reluctantly. As he was trying to figure out how to approach that vampire ex-friend of his when he returned to school in a week, maybe two, his bedroom door creaked open gently.

"Keito," his mother's voice said softly, and he looked up to meet her eyes. He looked horrible; his eyes were red and dry, the dark circles underneath them taking up almost all the space above his hollow cheeks, and his hair hadn't been washed or combed in days. "Keito, you need to shower and get dressed. The funeral is in three hours."

The door closed, leaving Keito alone with a predicament.

He could use his last remaining energy to do as she said, to get to his feet and wash himself and pull on a new pair of clothes, nice ceremonial clothes, and go out to face the sun and face his classmates and deliver that eulogy and do whatever it was that he hadn't yet planned afterwards, or he could stay here and waste away, slowly bringing himself towards his own untimely death to match Eichi's.

Groaning, he gripped the edge of his bed and dragged himself into a standing position. He heaved a breath. If standing took that much effort, how would he be able to deliver an entire eulogy? He should have thought this through. He should have thought everything through. He should have shut up that night, he should have stayed with Eichi, he should have closed the window.

The shower was uncomfortable, as the hot water brought feeling to skin that had grown dry, numb, and grimy. He felt faint in the heat. It was a short shower, as he knew that he might fall unconscious if he stayed in there any longer.

When he returned to his room, his mother had left his clothes on his bed. They felt loose. Had he managed to lose that much weight by starving for only three or four days? Perhaps he was imagining it. Nonetheless, he carefully slipped into his clothes and exited his dark bedroom into the lighted living room, where his family sat silently, eating breakfast, looking up at him with pity in their eyes.

He had forgotten his glasses. He didn't care. He wouldn't need to read the eulogy he hadn't written. And without his glasses, he wouldn't be able to fully see Eichi's beautiful body, frozen in time, to remind him of his regrets of their final night together.

"I'm ready," he croaked.

His father nodded.

Due to the circumstances of his incredibly close relationship with the deceased, Keito had been exempt from participating in the ceremony. (He had insisted on fulfilling his duties, but when he refused to step anywhere near the casket, he gave in to his parents' wishes: that he appear only to deliver the eulogy.) He arrived at the same time as the rest of his family, but he sat to the side; he was alone until guests began to filter in. First came Eichi's family, of course, and after that, his friends. Keito's friends. Their classmates, their kouhai, even their enemies.

No one dared to approach Keito for quite a while. He wasn't keeping track of time, but he watched from his position, crouched in the corner of the room on a chair, knees hugged to his chest, for at least twenty minutes before Isara approached him cautiously, and Keito could see the pity on his face.

"...How are you holding up, Hasumi-senpai?" the boy asked quietly, but the answer was evident. Never before had he seen the vice president in a worse state. He was too weak to even cry, and he was curled up in a position of cowardice and vulnerability that Isara never imagined he would ever see him in.

Keito only shook his head and looked away. "Don't get hung up on this, Isara," he whispered, barely audibly. One might think by the way he looked and spoke that he might have been the one the ceremony was being held for. "You have to take care of the student council."

Isara narrowed his eyes, taking a step closer to hear Keito better. "What about you, though? Won't you assume his position as president? That's the order, right?"

"I will, but I am taking some time off." No more needed to be said; the boy understood. He closed his eyes solemnly. After a moment of somewhat uncomfortable silence, he gave Keito his condolences and hurried off to find that sleepy friend of his.

He spotted Kiryu and Kanzaki talking quietly on the other side of the room—knowing how both of them felt about Eichi, he was sure they had come just to be there to help him through his pain. Their friendship was a great gift, and he was eternally thankful, but he didn't want to talk to them yet. Not until after the eulogy. He made eye contact with Kiryu and shook his head, to which the other nodded grimly.

The service began and proceeded with Keito barely noticing. He had moved from his seat in the corner to sit at the front, where he paid no attention to the words said or the rites performed, simply delivering his eulogy in his head over and over. He didn't even know if he had the physical strength to deliver it, really, but he had to push through his exhaustion and weakness. For Eichi, right? It was for Eichi.

This eulogy would be his apology. This was his only chance to make it right.

His father motioned towards him.

"Keito," he said quietly. "It's your time."

He rose to his feet, turning to face the crowd, and cleared his throat. He held no note cards. The words were written down in his messy script in his head, as clearly as if they were written in a darker black than the room he had buried himself in as he composed it, and he would have no trouble reciting it from memory. The memory was all he had, after all.

Gripping the note with Eichi's final words in his left hand, he began.

"I have known Eichi since childhood," he rasped, his voice even hoarser than he had expected. Perhaps going with minimal water for several days had been a poor decision. "He was not the kind of child one would expect to grow close with. He was nearly bedridden, and as such he couldn't play; he was stuck-up and selfish; he believed that the world could be his at the ring of a bell and nothing more.

"Perhaps that was why I remained by his side. He was always served and pitied, even by those closest to him. He was irrational in his excessive self-regard. I, as a child who admittedly thought the same of myself, felt the need to push him down from his pedestal and force him to stand at my level: we were the same, despite his sickness, despite his status. I saw in him something more than the prodigious child who walked on a velvet carpet laid before him at his every whim. What he needed was not his every wish, but something he had not even had the chance to wish for: companionship.

"Throughout our years together, I watched Eichi grow. He blossomed from a self-absorbed and somewhat sad angelic child into something that shined far brighter and soared far higher. He learned to live. Being kept sheltered was not the life that Eichi was destined for; it was only natural that someone with a wandering, dreaming mind such as his would make his way into the world with a flash. He became mischievous and meddling. He played pranks to watch his victims react, to know that he wasn't just a helpless child—no, in fact, he could affect others when he wanted to, he could make them angry or irritated or sad or happy just as anyone else could.

"If anything, he was better at it than anyone else I have ever met. Eichi twisted me, a person who, in my youth, considered myself nothing less than an upstanding and moral person, into his little schemes with the ease of a few words and a smile. He drew me in as he did many. Insects are enraptured by flames and shining stars; it was only natural that those around him saw him in a similar light. He was truly an intriguing person. Not only were his demeanors fascinating, but his actions were as well. One could try to analyze his motives for months or years and never achieve a distinct answer.

"I tried to study him. I tried to understand why he did everything that he did—even as I stood by his side in his climb to the top of Yumenosaki, even as I knew that what we were doing only brought harm to our friends and our undeserving enemies, I didn't understand. I figured that maybe he was only raised with this egocentric view, and that he would grow out of it. He cared for his school; he cared for me; it was sure that he would come to care for those who he believed stood below him.

"That part of my hypothesis, at least, was correct. He suffered, surely, some might say deservedly so. I disagree. He would have come to learn his lesson, and if not for the open revolution against his tyranny, I would have been his teacher.

"I thought that, at least. It had hardly come to mind that I needed a teacher of my own, someone to open my eyes and see that I had not helped Eichi in aiding him at all, but rather I had brought him more pain than he could have ever deserved. He grew from it, but the price was more than his body and mind could stand to pay. He didn't care about that anymore, though. He didn't care about his deteriorating condition. What he cared about now was one thing: life."

Keito coughed into his hand and wiped a tear that had involuntarily fallen from his left eye. He closed his eyes. It was close to the end now; he should save the pitiful crying for afterwards. "He longed to live," he continued. "No matter what the consequences, he wanted to use his life to the fullest to spread these newfound feelings of joy and love that he had once feared would take him from his emperor's throne to everyone he could reach. He was happy. He was at peace. He wanted to spend the end of his life making sure that his friends and his classmates, even those who feared and loathed him, would feel the same.

"His goal held true, at least in my personal experience. Eichi had gone from a shriveled, deformed bud to a stunning white rose that none had expected to see bloom in such glory. He was astounding; his words and songs touched more hearts than he could have dreamed. They certainly touched mine. By the end of his life, Eichi had fulfilled this wish of his—not only did he love others, but they loved him as well.

"Eichi was beautiful, inside and out, a beauty that had risen from dark, murky depths. Eichi was kind and passionate. He believed in love, he believed in joy, and he believed that the light of heaven could shine down upon us all. What he did not realize was that he was that light. He was revered, awesome, and inspiring. He was respected. He was supported.

"He was loved."

In all honesty, Keito was surprised he was able to get the last words out before he heaved a deep exhale and his vision blurred even further than it had been—he had almost forgotten that he wasn't wearing glasses. Making his way to his seat proved difficult due to this vision impairment, but he made it nonetheless. The rest of the ceremony passed in a blur, and perhaps he was sobbing, perhaps he was silent, he wasn't sure. What he knew was that he didn't move until everyone else seemed to have dissipated.

A sturdy hand rested on his shoulder, and he flinched. When he looked up, Kiryu's worrisome green eyes met his own exhausted ones, and Keito sobbed again, trying to muffle the sound with his hand.

"Danna." The taller man lifted Keito up and pulled him into his chest, beginning to rub gentle circles into the tight muscles of his back. Keito noticed that Kanzaki trailed a few steps behind him. They made brief eye contact, but Kanzaki only looked down at his feet, his hand on a hip that, for once, didn't carry his sheathed sword.

Keito wrapped his arms around Kiryu's torso. He let himself cry; there was no reason for him to hold back anymore, was there? This was the funeral. This was where he was meant to cry for the beloved dead. Comforting words were continuously whispered into his ear, though they only seemed to drive him further into hysterics. He was shaking. He could hardly control the sobs that wracked his body or the slurred cries of Eichi's name that intermingled with his moaning. He pulled back and looked up at Kiryu, hopelessness spreading across his face, and he took a deep, careful breath before abruptly turning to walk away.

His brother's car sat in the parking lot. Well, one of them. This one was a nicer one; a sleek black BMW sedan with the highest packages of luxurious upgrades installed. Keito slammed the driver's side door open and left a dent in the next car over. He threw himself into the seat, fumbling in the glove box for where he knew his brother left the key, and turned the ignition. He was legally blind without his glasses and he wasn't even old enough to be licensed in the first place.

He swerved onto the road.

The mile or so drive to school was made shorter by his complete disregard for the speed limit, the possible consequences not even making their way into his typically lawful mind. He hadn't thought of a plan for what to do after the funeral. This certainly was not part of the plan that he had begun to formulate, but to hell with that, it would have been useless anyway. Sure, he had apologized to Eichi. Sure, he had given that shitty eulogy, words he hadn't even taken the time to write down, but that wasn't enough. It wouldn't ever be enough to atone for the guilt he felt, having left Eichi like that after a horrible fight, having left him to die.

He stopped the car approximately in the middle of five different parking spots. He bothered neither with locking the car nor even with turning it off; he only stumbled out of it and tossed the keys onto the ground, looking only upwards.

Yumenosaki Academy was a three-story building surrounded by courtyards, sidewalks, and gardens. The door to the rooftop patio was always unlocked.

Keito ran as fast as he could towards the stairway—that wasn't saying much, as his body was weak enough that a single step sent fire shooting through every limb, but he made it all the same. He climbed the stairs. Perhaps he should make a stop at the student council office on his way, to see again where Eichi died.

No. That was a waste of time. He could spend a few minutes at the spot where he had found his friend's lifeless body or he could spend those few minutes seeing his friend again.

Once he was on the roof, he stopped to fall to his knees, wheezing and coughing from the exertion. His mind was racing still, but as he sat there it began to slow down; how irrational could he be to act like this, to impulsively run away from everything and toward Eichi even after his friend was dead? The cause was Eichi, of course, as even in death his soul brought raw emotions to those who loved him, most certainly to Keito.

The vice president was not very good with emotions. He couldn't sort through what he felt so he just let the feelings carry him, and within a blink he was sitting down again on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling and shaking with the wind.

He was being foolish, he knew. He had read the story of Romeo and Juliet: Juliet did wake up, didn't she? She was playing a trick, and since Romeo had been an idiot and not known her plan, he killed himself, thinking she was dead. Keito would not be an idiot like Romeo. He knew the consequences of his actions, he knew that there would be much for him to miss out on if he suddenly died in vain over a love that could not be saved, and he hoped that Eichi would wake up to see him soon. He wanted to meet Eichi again. That was all he wanted, to make up for their final exchange of words and to hear Eichi's forgiveness ring true in his ears.

That story was, in the end, both a love story and a tragedy. Romeo and Juliet never got to have a final resolution because in the end they both died.

Keito liked to think that they laughed over their folly together in heaven.

If he wanted to truly arrive at Eichi's heart, he would not be able to meet him alive, but perhaps they could one day laugh together again. He leaned forward, barely being supported by the corner of the roof, and closed his eyes.

He would not be an idiot. If he were so set on that, why was he so close to—

"Danna!"

Keito's head snapped up. The cry had come from below him—did Kiryu follow him here? Shit, he wasn't supposed to see him like this. Kanzaki definitely wasn't, and he saw the purple blob in his blurry line of sight sprinting towards the space below where he sat.

He craned his neck, pushing himself slightly off of the roof's surface to see Kanzaki better.

He lifted one hand from where it supported his weight,

He slipped.

His unit-mates' shouts were drowned out by the pounding of blood and whooshing of wind in his ears as he fell, arms and legs limp, the note still clutched in his hand. It was almost as if he were flying, the way his limbs splayed out like wings, flapping with the wind, and he thought to himself, Eichi was waiting for him. As soon as he hit the ground, he would fly up again to be with the man he loved.

Eichi would meet him at the gates of heaven, as lovely an angel as he had always been, and he would accept him graciously. They would resolve their argument. Keito would hold Eichi close in his arms, possibly place a kiss on his lips, and they would be together as friends again.

Keito smiled.

 


End file.
